ALGERIA -Profile - Chakib Khalil.

A technocrat with long experience as a senior World Bank economist and energy consultant based in Washington, Khalil was appointed Minister of Energy and Industry on Dec. 23, 1999. He succeeded Youcef Yousfi who became foreign minister. For months until his appointment, Khalil had acted as a top advisor to Bouteflika. He was brought in soon after Bouteflika was elected president.

From the late 1970s until he became an advisor to the president, Khalil was with the World Bank. In that post, he had been closely involved in economic restructuring in Latin America. Khalil is expected to bring some of the benefits of that experience into his ministerial post, especially now that Sonatrach is getting set to adopt a new role amid privatisation of its subsidiaries, increased competition from foreign oil companies for local projects, and so forth.

Khalil created waves when he was quoted by Algerian daily 'Le Matin' as saying on Feb. 1: "If Sonatrach finds that it needs money and considers that money useful to, for example, finance its activities abroad, the company can sell some of its shares. Sonatrach has the possiblity to sell shares if it is felt necessary or it considers that it is useful for example to expand its activities at home or abroad or to buy foreign companies".

Subsequently it has become clear that privatisation will only affect the subsidiaries of Sonatrach, for the foreseeable future. Khalil himself told parliament later that privatisation would only involve Sonatrach's holding in 29 firms but the core company will remain 100% state-owned. Some of the Sonatrach controlled firms to be relased to the private sector include its internal airline, and real-estate and finance firms.